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Spam Prevention: What to Do If Youre Marked by anESP as SpamPerhaps you feel as though youve done everything correctly and your email is still hitting the spamfolder instead of the inbox. Alternatively, perhaps you already had a deliverability problem with yourmarketing emails and were reading this book in order to learn how to fix your problem. Possibly, youvenever had a problem before and suddenly a specific send hits the spam folder. What should you do?Theres actually a great tried-and-true process for attempting to determine what sent you to spam andhow to fix it. In this article, well walk you through your spam prevention.Spam Prevention Step 1: Test Addresses and Spam DeliverabilityHopefully, you took the prior advice in this book and tested your email send to a group of seedaddresses or test addresses before you sent the entire email. That means that you were able to identitythat your email had a spam problem long before you sent it to your entire list. If you didnt do that, thensolving your problem for spam prevention may be more difficult than the process that we are about todescribe. Also, identifying and fixing your spam problem after its been identified in your pre-send testsmeans that you havent wasted an email send and you can, hopefully, correct the spam problem and stilldeliver your email to the inbox of your subscribers. If you only realized the spam problem retroactively,then youve most likely wasted an email send that landed in the spam folder of most of your email list.In addition to knowing if you have a problem for spam prevention before you send to your main list,sending to your seed or test email addresses prior to sending the email as a whole can tell you if you willhave a spam problem in just one email service provider or in multiple email service providers. This canhelp you make better decisions. If youre ending up in the junk folder in Hotmail, for example, youcertainly need to remedy your spam issue because Hotmail accounts for huge portions of most emaillists. However, if you are ending up in the spam folder in a less important email service provider, it maybe worth your time to simply send anyway and fix the spam issues retroactively.Seeing if you have a email deliverability problem in all email service providers or just one can also makeyour "fix process" different. You may be experiencing a black list issue with just one email serviceprovider. Or, you may have one email service provider whose spam filters are more sensitive thanothers. If you are lucky, you are caught in spam in an email service provider who has a streamlinedcontact for email marketers to request clarification, such as Hotmail. You can also make decisions, suchas segmenting your list by email service provider and sending your multi-part html message to anywherethat did not flag you as spam and a text-only version to places that did flag you as spam. Regardless ofhow you proceed, the first step is to identify where you landed in the spam folder and then focus yourtesting efforts on perfecting that email template for that particular email service provider. 1

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If you ended up in the junk folder in multiple email service providers, you may want to go back and startfrom scratch with your template. Alternatively, you may be in a scenario where you have recently had ahigh number of spam complaints or email list quality issues. While its important to go through theentire spam testing process described below, its equally important to take a moment to take a three-hundred-and-sixty degree look at your email marketing program and explore if youve violated enoughspam best practices over the recent past that you may simply need to "wait it out" until you can returnto the inbox.Spam Prevention Step 2: The Subject LineThe subject line is often the biggest culprit in sending an email to the spam filter, and spam filtersprioritize email subject line content highly. Begin by making sure that your subject line follows basicspam best practices:  Is it too long? Try to make sure its thirty-five to fifty words  Have you used ALL CAPS? If so, remove them.  Have you used excessive punctuation?!!? If so, remove it.  Have you used any of the spam-filter trigger words detailed in this section?After youve checked your subject line for any of the potential spam triggers above, try resending theemail with a completely safe subject line. Its probably a good idea to send one test with the subject linethat you used simply modified to remove any of the potential spam triggers above and a second testwith an entirely different subject line. If you now get into the inbox, thats great and youve fixed yourspam prevention problem. If not, continue to use the "safer" subject line and proceed to step three ofthis test.Spam Prevention Step 3: The ContentThe next most likely portion of your email that may cause you a spam prevention problem is theactual content of your email. This can be time consuming to test, but we have a recommended methodthat can speed it up.Take a look at the body of your email. Break it up into four or five "sections" of content. Begin byremoving the first section of content. Send the email. Does it still go to spam? Then the offendingcontent is in a different section. Remove the next section, and then send the email. Are you still in thespam folder? Then that section was not the problem either. Continue removing sections and sending theemail until you finally hit the inbox. When that happens, youll know what section of the email includedthe words, links, or html code that set off the spam filters. You can go back and begin to rework thatcontent and then reinsert it into the email until you find a version of it that no longer sends you to spam. 2

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Its important that when you begin to replace the content that you stripped out of the email, youreplace it one piece at a time, just like you took it out, and resend the email each time. You may havemore than one problem area, but it was how the areas worked in combination that sent the email tospam to begin with.If the portion of your email that is causing you to go to spam is in the content, youll identify it using thisprocess. If you do identify it, then you can fix it and send your email. If you dont, then move on to stepfour of this testing process.Spam Prevention Step 4: ImagesIn step four, youll want to remove all (or as many as possible) of the images from your email and thenresend the email. Email images, particularly when heavily used, can increase your score in a spam filtersince so many spammers use images to high viruses, spyware, and even inappropriate messages thatthey dont want spam filters to be able to read in the text of their email. Start by removing all imagesfrom your email template and seeing if you then make it into the inbox. If you do make it into the inbox,you can begin adding images back into your email one-by-one until youve reached a "tipping point" andland back in the spam or junk folder. If you want to be entirely safe, it is probably better to send youremail without any images at all if images turned out to be what was causing you to go to the spam orjunk folder.If stripping out or removing images solves your deliverability problem, you can now send your email. Ifnot, continue on to step five of this process.Spam Prevention Step 5: Text OnlyBefore you try the unlikely source of your "from address" or have to start looking at more drastic andcomplicated reasons why your email may be hitting the spam folder, attempt to send the text-onlyversion of your email. Why would you want to do this? If the text only version of your email makes itinto the inbox, then you have ruled out the health of your email list or a blacklist or sender reputationproblem with your IP or domain name. List health and sender reputation issues are difficult and timeconsuming to remedy. If the text-only version of your email makes it into the inbox, then you know thatif you simply strip down and sanitize your HTML version, you can get into the inbox. Of course, makesure that your text-only version also uses a clean subject line and content free of spam-trigger words. Ifthe text-only version also goes to spam, youll need to proceed to step six of this process.Spam Prevention Step 6: The From AddressStep six is the fastest test, and its also the least likely to be the cause of your problem of deliverabilityand spam prevention. However, its certainly worth testing just in case. Change the "from" address ofyour email and try sending again. Its likely that if youre experiencing a deliverability problem due to 3

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something bigger than your subject line or your content, simply changing the "from" address on youremail wont get you into the inbox. However, at this point in the process its certainly worth testing. Thereasons that youre experiencing deliverability problems if you arent able to solve your junk or spamfolder issue with a change to content, images, or subject line can be much larger and much moredifficult to fix. Its certainly worth the ten minutes to see if changing the "from" address will solve yourproblem! If it does solve the problem, then you can continue with your email send. If not, continue on tostep seven of this process.Spam Prevention Step 7: Email List HealthIf you are using a third party email marketing platform provider such as Comm100, then your emailmarketing list is most likely in great shape given that most thirty party email marketing providersautomatically prune and clean your list and ensure that unsubscribe requests are handled properly.However, it may be surprising to you how many times in-house email management systems fail to dothis. If you have built an in-house system, then any small piece of change to your website code or serverconfigurations, among other technical elements, can result in bounces not being pruned from youremail lists, unsubscribe requests not being properly removed, and even bad addresses being mailed torepeatedly. If an error such as this has happened, then email service providers will begin to black listyou. Spammers commonly dont take the time to clean or manage their lists, so if for some reason yourlist management techniques have failed, you will appear as though you are a spammer.List management and keeping a clean email list is one of the greatest arguments for using an outsourcedemail marketing provider. Managing the process in-house leaves a great deal of room for error and canbe downright challenging.If you discover through the course of investigation that you have made an error in email listmanagement, youll want to take the following steps:  Immediately correct the error  For any email service provider that allows an inbound channel for questions from companies that send email, send a communication admitting your error and asking to be reinstated to inbox status  Be prepared to wait things out. If youve made a critical list management error, you may just need to be prepared to "wait out" your penalty phase.If you discover that youve made a significant list management error, then you may not be able toremedy it in time for your next email send – or even your next several emails. However, you now knowwhat the issue is and you can move on with correcting it. If, however, your list appears to be clean andhealthy, youll unfortunately need to consider step eight of this process. 4

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Spam Prevention Step 8: Your IP or DomainUnfortunately, if youve now tried all of the other steps on this email check list and have still notidentified why youre going to the spam or junk folder, its likely that youve taken a hit to your senderreputation score and that "black mark" is now associated with your IP or domain. While its possible totest this by attempting to send from alternate IPs or domains, most email spam filters are fairly smartand will still be able to recognize it as you. If you have alternative IPs or domains available to you, youcan try sending from them. If they do end up in the inbox, you know that you have a sender reputationproblem. You can make a business decision at that point as to whether its worth it to you to attempt tosend your marketing email via your alternate domain or IP. However, whether you do that or not, youllwant to consider steps nine and ten as well as the last resort in this process. Repairing your senderreputation can be challenging, can take time, and wont always be successful. Thats why its soimportant to follow all email marketing best practices from the very beginning of your email marketingprogram.Spam Prevention Step 9: Contact the Email Service Provider if PossibleIf you believe that you have a sender reputation problem or have been blacklisted and our content isvalid, your list is opt-in or double opt-in, and you havent made list management errors or experiencedhigh user unsubscribe or spam complaints, then you can proceed to contact email service providerswhere possible. Hotmail offers a contact form, as do several other email service providers. However, beaware that the response time may take quite a while and the burden of proof will be on you to provethat your email is both high quality and desired by your subscribers. If you have developed a senderreputation problem, there is likely a reason for that and you will have a difficult time convincing an emailservice provider otherwise.Spam Prevention Step 10: Reduce the Size of Your SendYou can also try reducing the size of your email send to only the most engaged users. Remove anybodywho doesnt regularly open and respond to emails from your email list. Then send to only your highestvalue, highest activity subscribers. This will improve your email metrics with email service providersbecause it will demonstrate high open rates and low unsubscribe or spam requests. A smaller list alsomeans a higher chance of making it into the inbox. Its not an ideal fix, but because youre most likely ina situation where youll need to use the last resort described below, it at least allows you to continueemailing on a regular basis with limited results.Last Resort for Spam Prevention: Attempt to Wait it OutYour last resort is simply to wait it out. If youve gotten a damaged sender reputation, the only thing thatcan ultimately heal it is time. Continue to send email, but make sure that its email with very few images 5

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and absolutely no questionable content. As described above, send it to a smaller segment of your list.Your email marketing results will be minimized, but its a necessary step in order to repair the damagethat youve done to your sender reputation. Depending on the reasons for your sender reputation issuesand the severity of them, you may return to inbox deliverability in a month or in six. If it is longer thansix months, your infractions must have been quite severe and you most likely need to explorealternatives to email marketing for the near future.The best defense against significant spam and junk folder problems is to use all email best practices inthis book, and of course particularly the best practices of spam prevention described in this section,from the beginning of your campaign and in all sends. If your users respond well to your email and emailservice providers subsequently identify you as a trustworthy email sender, your campaigns and emailmarketing program will be successful.No matter what email marketing strategy you are taking, the first step to ensure a successful emailcampaign is to choose a reliable email sending partner. Comm100, who provides this comprehensiveemail marketing ebook, offers you powerful Email Marketing Software, which is both a great long-termand short-term solution to improving your email marketing program to a new level. For moreinformation please visit : http://emailmarketing.comm100.com/ 6